Posts by Mike Forsyth

F# Real World Usage

Primary areas of real world use are in financial analysis and bioinformatics - it can also be used, since it is a full .NET language, as part of any .NET system where parallelism can be exploited in a module as it can take advantage of multicore processors

Never really going to have the impact that C# has, but a great language to work in all the same

Not on St Kilda it won't

Needs WIFI or a network data connection neither of which were on St Kilda in the Atlantic west of the Outer Hebrides - so i used the National Trust chappie to send a postcard of a puffin with the St Kilda stamp - which of course arrived after I got back. Sometimes the technology just can't hack it...

Transponders

Non transponder aircraft can fly eveywhere within the UK at present (apart from Stansted which is now a transponder mandatory zone) provided they have radio. Transponders are not mandatory in all of the other Control Zone space - but they do cut down the amount of info the pilot has to send to ATC (who do a fantastic job separating aircraft using cardboard). I fly in an area that is stuffed full of RAF so I am getting one at the thrilling cost of 1500 quid to help the boys in blue miss me

Exclusive?

So it was exclusive on O2 and now it isn't and Orange have it as well as O2? Does this mean that Vodafone might pick it up as well - or is it exclusive with O2 and Orange now? That might stop the marketing phone calls from Vodafone with HTC magic is better than the iphone and Samsung Jet is better than the iphone....

Promising what will happen anyway?

I live in the midde of nowhere in Scotland and even we are supposed to be getting BT's 21CN in 3 years time (according to samknows) - so the promise of broadband almost everywhere in 5 years and definitely in 10 years looks like promising what BT would deliver anyway just updating BT infrastructure (not counting what BT competitors would be putting in).

It would be nice to have any competition around here (it is all BT and nothing else) as fighting their engineer call out charge whenever they bugger up their own exchange and blame me, even when their engineer says it is the exchage, is getting tiresome.

@Neil Gerstenberg et al

I was in that drumming class (I figured it would be a safe change from flying or sailing or climbing - how wrong was I) and drummed beside the chap that sadly died. The comprehensive report on the BBC page explains that they only found anthrax spores in the hall at Smailholm and not in this home where he did his hobby of taxidermy. His home was very closely examined as that was the mian hypothesis last year. When they found nothing they eventually examined the hall where the classes took place where they found spores.

As an aside although you could walk past the hall and drive up to it, there was an air exclusion zone of 3 nautical miles so we couldn't fly over it under 3,000 feet... They also held the 'are you worried about Anthrax?' meeting in the village hall where they subsequently found the spores.

I wonder if any terrorist organisation would be interested in my drum...

There is also some IT in this story as one of the main problems highlighted in the report is the failing of IT in delays of database capture.

Transfer of numbers within BT

Perhaps it is because I am over 40 (as are most of the people who actually created the IT industry we all love) but BT will not allow me to transfer DDI numbers from BT to BT. They have to release them and then if I am lucky I can get my own number back... BT own DDI numbers I was told so tough luck.